Being Dudley Dursley
by zapisthename
Summary: My old life wasn't so good, and I don't even know if I was sad when I left it. Now I find myself in a world that I thought was fictional, but a world I'd always dreamed of being in. Except, I'm not the badass character everyone wants to be. I'm Dudley Dursley. Yeah, this is going to be a pain. Self insert Fic. M for swearing, and adult scenes later on.
1. Being Before The Beginning

**I DO NOT OWN HARRY POTTER.**

 **This will be the one and only disclaimer.**

'Life is one set of painful experiences followed by the next, and then- you die'

Sometimes the truth behind that statement baffles me, and makes me want to cry, except I can't cry because I just don't even care anymore. My life had never been anything to write home about, disappointments after disappointments till I finally came to the conclusion that maybe living in fiction was much better than the drab ways of the real world.

Fiction is an escape to all of us after all, and how hard could it be for me to escape into a world that is much better than my actual reality.

I guess I wasn't thinking about any of it when I got hit by a car. I swear I saw death come for me in slow motion- media's depiction of the grim reaper with the black hood and the scythe that seemed to have a tint of red. They say your life flashes before your eyes as you die, but none of that bullshit ever happened to me, instead I only stared, my body frozen as the car seemed to rush towards me at a speed that was surely faster than light.

As it hit me, I felt the pain come, the bones break, the agony of having your body mercilessly ripped apart, I barely had the time left to stare at the horrified face of the woman driving the car, I couldn't help but in that instant want to crack a joke related to women and driving. And then, I was no more.

-x-

I woke up in a bed that I wasn't too familiar with, with two faces staring at me. These faces I was extremely familiar with. There was Uncle Monty from 'Withnail and I', of that there was no question, it was one of my favorite movies after all. What I didn't understand was why Richard fucking Griffiths would come to visit me in the hospital bed, or why despite not feeling any glasses on my face, I seemed to be able to see every detail of his face clear as crystal. He seemed to be tired, but pleased to see me, which was good. I was a fan.

I looked at the woman, I knew her too, Fiona Shaw. She was also an actress, and she seemed to be on the job, pulling off what had to be the most convincing 'doting mother' act I had ever seen. I know a character archetype when I see one, I spend time on TV Tropes. It was clear that their feelings of concern were being directed at me, but I couldn't really tell why that was the case. I wasn't famous, or even British as far as I know, and yet here were two relatively more famous actors just at my bedside. In the back of my head, I couldn't help but feel I had seen them before, somewhere. Somewhere together.

"Oh no" I audibly muttered as my brain pieced it together. I had always been told I was sharp, quick to draw conclusions (though I don't know how accurate the words of a fifty year old drunk teacher were) and it seemed like that was an accurate assumption about me to make, but if my mind was really telling me what it was telling me, I was well and properly fucked.

"Oh no" I repeated, perhaps dumbly because I had no idea what was happening. I was surely dreaming, or something along those lines. This was not happening. And then I saw him.

It would be easy to miss him after all. From the corner of my eye, I saw him, peering through the door, he looked worried too, though I had no idea why he was that worried, unless the accident was going to be pinned on him. He had those glasses, and despite him being very far away, I could see the faint mark on his forehead. He looked like Daniel Radcliffe, and he was in make-up too.

I almost wanted to say the F-word when I realized just who I was in this scenario, and I looked at my already pudgy arms, and my protruding belly. Yep. I was Dudley motherfucking Dursley.

"Fuck" I finally said after a minute of silence, before promptly going back to sleep, hoping that I'd wake up in the hospital bed and world that was designated for me. Or dead. Either way would work.

-x-

Have I ever told you how I really hate life?

It had been three weeks since the 'accident' (the word was said in hushed tones around Harry Potter by my parents, and even they didn't seem cruel or sadistic enough to insinuate that he had been responsible for causing the accident, whatever it was, but it was pretty obvious they thought he was responsible, and they were avoiding him as a consequence) and I was almost getting ready to _murder_ my parents, well, fake parents. It was bad enough to be called 'Diddyums' or 'Dudders' every five fucking seconds, but they never left me alone, never gave me time to fucking think, to contemplate what I was going to do.

I'd managed to get working on that despite their best efforts to constantly annoy me with their presence. It had taken me around two days to figure out I had just turned nine years old, and it had taken me another two days to realize that thanks to appropriate birthdays, if I were a wizard, I'd be in the same year as Harry was- for some reason. I am a Harry Potter fan, I've read the books multiple times cover to cover, and I know Dudley was born a month before (or was it me now?) and that he and Harry would thus be eligible to go to Hogwarts together, but that was only if I was magic. And I was pretty sure in cannon, I wasn't magic. Which meant I was stuck in a universe, a fictional universe, away from the few friends and the few family members that were still talking to me, and I wasn't even able to do magic.

I almost wanted to let out a dramatic 'no' and wail myself to the floor, but the grown up me was not going to be party to any of that childish behavior, I proceeded to do what I ordinarily do in situations like these- which is be a grump.

I spent one week after that just moping about, lamenting the world I was stuck in. My 'parents' avoided me, and Harry seemed to run away as soon as I walked into the room, which was counterproductive to what I was trying to do. I was going to have to be away from the action, the least I could do was regularly correspond with Harry and constantly change things, that was all I had.

"Why do you keep running away?" I asked him, we were back in present day of course, and I'm sure I was wearing what had to be the grumpiest face a child could make.

"Are you seriously asking me that question?" he asked me boldly. I remembered him being more- timid, that was the appropriate word for it, in the books. He surprised me with his boldness in this one though.

"Yeah, I mean I know that I haven't exactly treated you very well, but I don't remember you running away from me"

Harry looked at me with a puzzled expression on his face, I think the Dudley in this universe had been even more dumber than the books had depicted him, I think he was surprised I had managed to put together two sentences together.

"I don't know" he finally managed to say. I looked at him with some measure of pity, here was a child that had been mistreated. They never went out and out abusive uncles on him, but he slept in a fucking cupboard for the love of God, he was alone, his parents dead, a destiny of pain, sacrifice and sorrow ahead of him, and he wasn't even allowed to be happy. I cursed Rowling for having come up with such a good setup for a character, wondering why I could never write shit like that.

"Hey" I said to him, perhaps more softly than a big fat and whiny kid like could muster. "Sit down, tell me what happened"

He looked up quickly, I think he was more shocked at the softness in my voice, at how it was not an order to sit down like the Dudley of the old would have given him, this was more of a request. His face quickly morphed into one of fear, perhaps I had played this card with him before then.

"I'm not going to do anything, I promise. No one tells me about the incident" I told him, which was true. My 'parents' had been avoiding talking to me about it all the time, they seemed extremely happy that I did not remember the so called 'traumatic incident'. I knew I was in the hospital, I had suffered a mild ankle sprain and nothing more, and that had healed with time too. I seemed to have been knocked out for a while, but had no concussions. Health wise, I was in the clear. I didn't understand what was so awful about the thing that happened to Dudley just before I was thrown into the world that no one was talking about it.

"Promise me" he told me.

"I swear"

"You really don't remember?" he asked me again, and I couldn't help but get irritated. I knew that he was mentally a child, even if I wasn't, but I had gotten used to people responding promptly. I didn't deal with children much in my previous life.

"Just tell me" I said, sighing.

"You and Piers" he began, I recognized that name as Piers Polkiss, my sidekick, and overall annoying fuck (from what little of him was described in the book, as far as I remembered, he was in the first one) "You guys were- uh, trying to hit me with a tube light, trying to break it on my head and see what would happen"

"Ugh" I said in disgust. "I'm really sorry about that." That was followed by another shocked expression on Harry's face.

"So you were about to hit me, and I was really scared, and I couldn't control myself and the tube light in your hand burst" he told me. "This seemed to scare you, and you backed onto the street, to get away from me" he said. "You seemed pretty- off, almost scared, and your eyes went weird"

"What do you mean my eyes went weird?" I asked him sharply.

"You went cross-eyed, like your eyes rolled into the back of your head" he seemed to have described that perfectly fine. "I thought you were in shock" he continued.

"And you finally stepped onto the street, where a car was racing toward you, it was going really fast"

I waited with bated breath, this was very similar to what ended my old life (I think).

"Then you looked at the car, and the car suddenly turned sharply, it narrowly grazed your knee, and you tripped and fell on your ankle, but the car just smashed into another car"

"Did the driver do that?" I asked him. "Did the driver try to swerve?"

My excitement was palpable, it was possible that for some reason, by some miracle, maybe through the magic of transportation, my name was also on that Hogwarts registry, and I had activated my dormant magic so that I could save my eyes. I was excited, almost too excited by this.

"Dudley, how are you doing that?" he asked me.

"Doing what?" I asked him absently, before looking at the light bulb in the room, it seemed to be glowing brighter, much brighter than any light bulb I had seen.

"That" Harry said, and it was like a damn burst, and I willed for the bulb to explode.

And it did.

As Harry bolted from the room, I grinned. "This just got very interesting"

-x-

It took a week of Harry running away from me (which I found extremely comical) before I finally managed to convince him that I also had special powers. I swore that I had little control over the powers and that what I had, I was not going to use to torment him. I then gave him a heartfelt apology, telling him in as many words that I was sorry about what I had done to him, and how I had treated him because I thought he was different, but that I was willing to change, and that I was going to stop bullying him and start treating him more like what he was, which was a brother.

To convince him of that took longer, I threw a first class temper tantrum to get the Dursley's to give the smallest bedroom in the house to Harry. I even had Petunia buy him some new clothes. I gave him some of my (still working) toys, and that was what finally convinced him that I had changed for good, and after that, we were really close friends. Something that seemed to annoy my parents more than anything else, also something I couldn't give a rat's arse about.

The game plan was set, I had to stick to Harry, and I had to help him, whilst enjoying my time in Hogwarts. It took a while to accept that the old life I had was gone, a car ran over it. This was my new life, and I had to be one of the worst characters in a world of fiction, but it was okay, as I was a wizard. I even tried it out, making snowflakes appear when I really concentrated.

I discovered that having the mind of an adult helped me control my wandless magic like nothing else. I was even able to lock doors, and make the bulbs flicker when I was in the room. I was capable of making the candle put itself out with just my thoughts (Petunia noticed this and sent me to my room, the first time I was ever punished), which meant I was a wizard. It also meant that some things needed to change.

I had made friends with Harry, and pretty soon, we were extremely close. It was hard hanging out with a nine year old again, but we managed to make do. Nothing like a bit of Super Mario to ease the tension. I'd also wanted to look good while I was at Hogwarts, which meant I began exercising, and hard. I worked out every second I had free after school, thanks to my mind, my grades improved, I was in detention and remedial classes less, which meant I was working out or playing soccer with Harry more. I also began working jobs, as many as I could. I cleaned yards for people at first, before moving on to also delivering paper and selling lemonade. I made do with whatever I could to save up some money, because I knew that there was going to be an averse reaction to the discovery of me being a wizard, and I just might need some money to help me with school.

I began teaching Harry how to control some of his magic as well. The plan was to make him, and Ron (when I met him) into proper badasses. Hermione was going to be just fine as she had prodigal talent, but Ron and Harry would need help. Ron more than Harry, and I was going to help them. I had a plan on who my allies were going to be, I avoided the Slytherins, I stuck to the Ravenclaws and the Hufflepuffs, I resolved to help Neville out whenever I could too, but he was going to take a backseat to the golden trio.

I was basically trying to just save this universe, and try to save as many as I could through my actions, or my machinations.

-x-

 **The Office Of The Headmaster**

Albus Dumbledore stared at the registry with a smile on his face and a twinkle in his eye. He was an old man, he had lived for a century and a half, and he had sen a lot of wondrous things in his life, he had also seen a lot of dangerous things in his life, he could even say that he helped create some of those dangerous things. He wasn't alone in the office, looking at the registry of the students attending that year was done once before the letters were sent out, and the tradition called for the headmaster and the deputy headmaster to look at it together. The deputy headmaster wrote the letters under the supervision of the headmaster, it was one of those things that was done from the time of the founding figures of Hogwarts and had carried over to this day.

"What is so funny?" the current deputy headmaster, Minerva McGonagall asked him. She herself was no slouch in the age department, a witch of prodigious talent, and a reputation for being a very hard and fair teacher to boot, Albus was extremely lucky to have her on his side, helping him run the school.

"Irony" he said simply with a twinkle in his eye, before passing over the register to McGonagall.

She stared at the name 'Dudley Dursley' in the registry, he was right below 'Harry Potter'

"His cousin is also magical" she said flatly. "I don't see the irony here Albus"

Minerva wouldn't know the irony of the situation. He remembered it like it was yesterday, when a young Petunia Evans, jealous of the fact that it was her sister and not her who was magical, had written him a letter, asking him, no, begging him to let her attend Hogwarts alongside her sister. Of course, he was heartbroken when he realized he was going to have to tell her that she hadn't activated any magic in her, which probably meant that she had none in her to use, or to learn to control.

"Our world works in a funny way Minerva" he said to her. "We really are very lucky to be a part of it"

-x-

 **So that was the first chapter, thanks for reading it if you're still here. And please review the story, as it inspires me to create more and more. My other fics are also on the way, so don't you worry about that, this idea just didn't want to leave my head.**


	2. Being In Diagon Alley

**Let's make it somewhere nice next time Agent Apricot. What about the North Pole, or maybe Alaska.**

* * *

 **Being Dudley Dursley**

 **Chapter 2: Being In Diagon Alley**

* * *

I stared at what had to be the most intimidating woman I had ever seen in my life, and you guys haven't even met my mother. This woman was truly intimidating, even my fake dad and mom were scared of her, and I knew that they were pretty stubborn themselves.

It was June 23, my eleventh birthday, and I got the letter I had always anticipated for the longest time now. I had been waiting for two days to get this, and I was not disappointed when Minerva McGonagall showed up at my door step (something that was supposed to be the protocol for all muggle born wizards). She was just like I remembered her from the movies, which is good because in the movies, she was awesome. In general, McGonagall turned out to be one of the best characters ever, well known for being hard but fair to everyone. She was like Snape but more sensible.

My 'parents' meanwhile, stared at her with an equal mixture of fear and loathing in their eyes. That was understandable. Vernon had a hatred of all things magical and Petunia was still jealous of her sister, and now that her own son was going to get to do something she never could, it was probably going to hurt more.

I still remember me getting the letter. I'm sure everyone knows what the letter says, so there's no point recreating it here, but the reaction of my parents was in parts funny and scary.

 _ **Six Hours Ago**_

"Dudley" my mother said in the sternest tone I could ever remember her adopting. "Go to your room"

"No" I said defiantly. Even in my past life, I had a habit of being belligerent and sticking to my guns, arguing with people, even though I was more often in the wrong, than not. I was just a very combative person.

"What did you say?" Vernon asked me, his face was red. He was at his angriest I had ever seen him, even Harry couldn't get a reaction like that out of him.

"I said" I repeated, louder this time. "No"

"Dudley" Petunia said with a pleading tone in her voice. "You don't understand, we just want you to be like every other normal person, not a freak" she looked at Harry as she said that, he was also in the room, for some reason they had completely forgotten about him.

Now I might be an awful person and rude, but I was rude to everyone. In my past life, I was rude to everyone regardless of their age, gender, race or even sexual orientation. The problem with me was not that people were different, the problem with me was that people was people. But even for me, when she looked at Harry as she said the word freak was just so low, and suddenly I felt some rage.

Now I'll have you know that I could do some sort of wandless magic. It was really harmless stuff like making a leaf float. I'd heard that muggleborns in the book could do it, it helped that I had a calmer mind (as a result of being unceremoniously bumped into this word while I was an adult), at least that was my theory of it. But the minute she said that, I felt the rage bubble up inside me and a vase that was next to her shattered.

Petunia and Vernon both jumped in alarm, Vernon had an expression on his face that made it seem like he had been betrayed, and I understood. His whole life was spent pampering his seemingly normal child, who turned out to be not so normal anymore.

"Did you just call him a freak?" I asked her, slowly, I was still angry about everything that had happened.

"You" I said, pointing a finger at them. "You kept a child in a cupboard, decided to deprive him meals. He is your nephew and you treat him like he is the scum of the earth for being something that he didn't even ask to be. You're just angry that his mother was something you could never be" I said to Petunia. "And you're just insane" I said looking at Vernon.

I spit on the floor in disgust. "You have the _gall_ to call him a freak?" I asked them. "I think it's pretty clear who the freaks here are"

Vernon and Petunia had defeated expressions on their face, and I felt triumphant, and a strange amount of guilt too. It was human nature to be scared of things that were unknown. Magic was certainly a big unknown, and even in the real world, it was looked at as a joke, but Vernon and Petunia took it too far.

"The letter here says that Professor McGonagall is going to visit in around six hours. I'm going to meet her, I'm going to go to this school and learn to control my magic. You have two choices here" I said to them.

"You can try to get over the fact that your son has some sort of weird powers, and support him, and we can forget all about this" I said, carefully voicing out the first option. "Or you can be immature, not support your son. I have some money saved up (this was true, I had a lot of money saved up thanks to relentlessly cleaning out yards for people), I'm going to pay for school, or get a loan or something, the choice is really yours"

I looked at them and shook my head, trying to indicate to them how pathetic they seemed, before walking away.

Harry followed me as I left the room. "Hey Dud" he said to me.

Over the last two years, I had managed to repair the horrible relationship Dudley had with Harry before I happened to crash into his mind. I had treated him nicely, gotten him to trust me, and I could safely say that we were friends. I'd kept my mouth mostly shut with regards to the fact that we were both wizards, and this was also news to him. I could have told him earlier, but I felt like he needed to learn it on his own. I know Hagrid telling him he was a wizard was one of the finest moments of his life, I was not going to take that away from him. Although me being a wizard had inadvertently taken that away from him, I think.

"Hey Harry" I told him. "Sorry you had to hear all of that"

"No" Harry said shaking his head. "Thanks for sticking up for me like that" he told me. "That was wicked"

"Well, you're my brother aren't you?" I asked him. "Cousin, but still. We need to stick together right?"

Harry grinned at that. "Right" he said. His grin didn't last long though, as his face was soon taken over by a somber expression.

"What's the matter?" I asked him.

"You're gonna go to that school, of magic, and I'm going to be left behind" He said the word magic like how magical people say the word 'Voldemort', with a flinch.

I laughed at that. For a long time, long enough for Harry to look at me like I was a maniac.

"You're a fool if you think I'm not dragging you along with me" I said to him. He smiled again. "Plus you have he powers too, there is no reason for you to be left behind"

"It's not that" he said to me. "Your parents might not allow me-"

"Bullshit" I told him promptly. "I'll make sure you come along with me" that caused his smile to widen a bit.

"Leave the house for a bit" I told him. "You don't need to be around them now, I sense that they're going to be harder on you today, their favorite 'son' just lashed out against them after all, I don't doubt for a second that they'll blame you for this"

Harry nodded and we said our goodbyes before I went to my room.

 ** _Present Day_**

Minerva McGonagall looked unsure as to how to proceed. It was clear that my 'parents' were too tensed to say anything (I personally found the situation hilarious), she seemed to be glancing at Harry with what was more than morbid fascination. I couldn't blame her for it, Harry had grown up, away from everyone in his world, and they were all curious about how he was living his life.

"So, now that I have explained this to you, what do you think?"

She had spent the last ten minutes just explaining stuff to us, about where the school was in general, how the headmaster was one of the greatest people known to mankind (he was great, but he was also greatly flawed), about how I was going to find myself there, I was going to make friends that were going to last me for life, I was going to find what I wanted to do with my life, I was going to fall in love. You know, the usual claptrap that never actually happens.

My parents had spent the entire explanation silent, Petunia was as white as a sheet, Vernon as red as an apple. One of them was scared, the other was angry. Perhaps they were amazed at the level of insolence their spoiled brat of a child had displayed, but it was extremely hard to find any sympathy for them now. Over the last two years of this nightmare, they had gone from fictional characters I wasn't bothered about to extremely real people, and what they did affected me, it affected Harry and none of it was in a positive light. I was simply not going to stand for that.

"I'd love it" I said to her, there was a level of hesitance in my voice, the conversation in general actually. It seemed like no one was quite sure about how they wanted to go about their business. As soon as I said that I'd love to attend school however, McGonagall broke into a smile. A very, very rare smile. I was going to find that smiles from Professor McGonagall were as common as a snowball in hell, and I probably should have cherished this one more than anything else in the world.

In that moment I was happy. I was far away from home, the family that was still talking to me, the few friends I still had. I was in another world, stuck in the body of a fat little brat (I had to work really, really hard to throw the weight off), I was going through the painstaking process of planning out my entire stay at Hogwarts, endlessly debating on whether the world I was in was real, or not, or whether I ever wanted to go back, or not. However it could all be darned for a while, I was a motherfucking wizard. I was going to go to a wizard shopping center, buy myself some spell books and a pointy stick that I was going to use to alternatively make feathers float, or torture people (the torturing people part was debatable). It was very hard not to be excited when confronted by that.

"Now" Vernon said, almost in a cough. Thus successfully managing to kill my buzz. "We need to talk about the fees"

Of course he was going to talk about the fees, I wasn't too worried about it, I had money saved up. I was going to be good for a while, if nothing else.

"Ah yes" the professor said, in a very formal tone. "A year in Hogwarts costs approximately 300 Galleons, which comes out to about 1500 pounds. This is including all the books of course" she added hastily, upon seeing the angry expression on my dad's face. "For seven years of education, you are going to have to pay around 2100 galleons, or 10,500 pounds"

Vernon muttered something under his breath that sounded suspiciously like he said he was being fleeced.

"So Dudley" McGonagall turned to me, with a kind expression on her face. "It seems like there is no resistance from your parents" she gave them one hard look, which made both of them wince a little, but they didn't say anything. "Would you like to accompany me to Diagon Alley tomorrow?" she asked me. "Your parents would have to come of course"

"No" Petunia and Vernon said at once.

"I might be willing to part with my money because I love you so much son" Vernon said with anger in his voice. McGonagall stiffened at the use of the word 'farce'. "It pains me" he continued, "That you want to go away with these freaks and learn to be one, I love you enough to let you do what you want, but that doesn't mean I support it in anyway" he said to me. "You can go alone"

Maybe he had expected it to hurt me a little, but it really didn't, I realized I didn't give two shits about whether I was being forced to do this alone. If I made it past my seven years there, I was going to pay him back and get the fuck out of his life.

McGonagall did not seem pleased at all upon hearing what he had said, but chose to remain silent about it. There was a silence for a while before she finally spoke again, looking at me kindly. "So how about it Mr Dursley?" she asked me. "Is tomorrow morning fine with you?"

"Actually professor, I think I will go when Harry gets his letter" I said, Harry yelped when I brought his name into the mix, however McGonagall smiled again. This time it was not at me, this time it was at Harry.

"Harry will get the letter right? I know he has those powers too" I told her. She nodded.

"Yes" she said. "His name has been in the register ever since he was born Mr Dursley. He will be getting his letter on his birthday" she said, more to him than to me. Harry smiled at that.

"He bloody well won't be going" Vernon said, I had no idea how he had managed to gather the courage enough to say something like that.

"Excuse me?" McGonagall asked him.

"I said" Vernon repeated, slowly this time. "He. Bloody. Well. Won't. Be. Going" I wasn't sure if punctuating each sentence with a pause, as a way to mock McGonagall was a bad idea.

I decided that someone needed to play the part of being outraged, even though I knew that there was no chance Harry was going to be stopped from going to school, they'd drag him unconscious even if he didn't want to go. "Why not?" I asked, hoping that my mock outrage came off convincingly.

"You, keep quiet" Vernon snarled. "I might be forced to pay for you because Petunia wants me to, but I am not going to waste my money on letting some crackpot professor teach this freak some fancy skulduggery"

As soon as he said the word 'crackpot', the temperature in the room dropped. It was getting a bit hot, what with summer coming close and all, but all of a sudden it felt like we were in December. Or in Stoke.

"Did you just call Albus Dumbledore a crackpot?" McGonagall asked them both threateningly. Vernon was double McGonagall's size (he was a fatass), but even he looked cowed. Petunia hadn't said a word for a long time today, ever since my outburst.

"I will have you know" McGonagall continued. "That Harry's parents ensured that he would be taken care of when it came to school expenses" she told them. "So you don't have to pay out of your own pocket for him, however" she continued. "Call Albus Dumbledore a crackpot one more time Mr Dursley, and I assure you, the consequences will be dire"

The look on Vernon's face was one of horror. Shock and horror. It was things like these that made Minerva McGonagall so awesome.

"I believe I should leave" she said, rising from her chair. "If I stay here any longer, I might be arrested for doing magic on defenseless muggles" I loved this woman so much. "Mr Dursley" she said, turning to me. The stiffness in her voice gone. "You seem like a very clever child, you are going to do well in Hogwarts. You can go shopping with Harry when he gets his letter, which should be on July 31st"

I nodded.

"That will be all" she said to all of us before turning around, she looked at Harry, and smiled at him, one last time before leaving the house. We heard the gate shut and a resounding crack. She had disapparated.

-x-

The next month and eight days were- well, interesting was the word I'd use to describe it. Amazingly enough, Vernon and Petunia had taken to avoiding me and Harry. Every time Vernon looked at me however, he muttered under his breath, words like 'ungrateful' and 'traitor' coming out of his mouth. Petunia had gone completely silent, whether it was because of her jealousy at me being something she had aspired to be for the longest time, or something else. I wasn't sure.

I was kind of regretting the decision of waiting a month and going shopping with Harry. I knew that one of the major components of spellcasting was hand movement, and I needed to practice that if I had to get any better at it, however I wasn't getting much done staying at home and messing about, playing board games with Harry while he lazily daydreamed about giving people green heads and eating all the Mars Bars he could (the kid had this unhealthy craving for Mars bars)

I stayed at home more often, and rumors began to spread in the neighborhood about how I had disappointed my parents (this could be because of our current estrangement) but none of that really mattered because I was happily wasting my days away, getting ready to go to Hogwarts.

It was on one of those days I came to the realization that I was walking into what had to be the most dangerous place on this side of the planet and on any other side of the planet ever. Hogwarts was fucking dangerous, and the evidence was really there in front of us. There were going to be three headed dogs, a plant that strangles you, weird poisons, a chess set that was hell bent on killing people. The resident Dark Lord was going around hiding in the turban of a Professor who smelled like garlic because of some incident with vampires that he never spoke of. There was a giant snake that could kill you if you look at it, and he was just chilling somewhere in the bowels of Hogwarts that no one knew even existed. The gamekeeper was in the illegal business of smuggling dragon eggs, breeding weird crosses of creatures that was good news for no one, there were soul sucking creatures that wanted to kiss you and make you feel bad, vanishing cabinets, a poltergeist that made it a point to trouble you. Staircases that constantly shifted and you could easily fall to your gory death from.

"How the fuck do people not die here?" I asked myself in exasperation.

I didn't know what the plan was with regards to the situation. I was going to try to save as many people as possible, but this was like the oxygen mask conundrum. I was not going to be able to help anyone if I was unable to help myself, and I planned on helping myself as soon as I could. I knew I had to learn some skills. Occulemency and Legilmency came to mind, I was going to have to be able to shield my mind lest it be invaded by Snape or Dumbledore. I was also going to have to make sure that Harry, Ron and Hermione were capable enough of doing the same.

I sighed, it seemed like a long and tiresome process.

-x-

Summer came and brought Harry's birthday along with it. The mood in Pivet Drive that day was subdued. Petunia and Vernon had almost accepted the inevitable. They weren't avoiding us as much as they were just ignoring us now. It was starting to get annoying, the fact that we were estranged, and I wondered how it was going to affect everything that was cannon, I was already wary of the butterfly effect. Just my presence in this seemingly fictional world had to have set off ripples of far reaching consequence.

Harry seemed excited when the letter came early that morning, Vernon looked defeated, Petunia looked oddly absent from everything (maybe they had given up and were going to stop bothering themselves with the fact that their son was a freak and just move on with their lives). Around six hours later, came the giant. Now Hagrid was tall in the movies, but he was taller than in person, and that was an achievement. I would get a sore neck if I were to maintain an hour long conversation while staring him in the eye.

He did not seem pleased to see Vernon, Petunia and I at first, but Harry was nice to me, which caused him to warm up to me fast, and take us to the place we had been waiting to go to since what seemed like forever.

Diagon Alley.

I have never known famous people, so seeing Harry get mobbed by famous people was something of a shock to the system, but that was nothing compared to when we encountered Professor Quirrel.

My heart almost stopped when I saw him, I wondered if he was trying to read my mind right now, paranoia filling my head as soon as it happened. I began cursing the fact that I hadn't even gone to Diagon Alley a month earlier, I could have bought books and worked on obfuscating my mind. It seemed like he didn't really care enough to pay any attention to me because he barely even glanced in my direction, but that didn't mean that I was scared shitless.

Why wouldn't I be scared? This man right here was responsible for genocide. He was killing people based on who they were at birth, he was regarded as one of the greatest wizards of his time. There was but one person who could even match up to him. That was how awesome Lord Voldemort's power was, how was anyone supposed to compare to that. If I didn't respect Harry enough, my respect for him rose when I realized just how much courage it would have taken to be able to stand up to someone as intimidating, to walk to a certain death to ensure that everyone else would be saved.

I wasn't sure if I was going to do that.

"Are you okay?" Harry asked me in a hushed tone. We had just entered the alley and had barely had time to adjust ourselves to the sights and sounds of the area, Vernon and Petunia had given me two thousand pounds and told me that this was all I was going to get for them for the education. I had almost the same amount of money saved up from working various odd jobs which meant that I was not going to lack money when I entered Hogwarts.

"Why are you asking me that?" my voice was matching his hushed tone.

"When we met that Quirell guy" he said to me. "You seemed- I don't know, you seemed nervous"

I wished I could tell him exactly why I was nervous but it didn't seem like the right thing to do at the time.

"I don't know, I was just worried, you know, all the people" I wished that my hastily crafted excuse would stick. Fortunately, Harry was a kid, and I didn't have to worry about it because he believed what I had said.

"Don't worry about it Dud" he told me. "I'm also very new to this stuff. I didn't even have any idea that my parents were wizards too"

I remembered that. Hagrid had thrown a fit when he had heard that the official word on Harry's parents death was that they had died in a car crash.

We proceeded according to the books. Hagrid told us about the galleon to sickle to knut conversion system that I have already forgotten and am not going to bother remembering. He took us to Gringotts, where it took me a while to have a new account opened. Apparently as a minor, I had to chose someone to take care of my keys, I chose Hagrid. After depositing all my money in there, we went to Harry's vault. Harry insisted that all my school supplies also be bought using the money in his vault. I was oddly touched by his gesture. Children could be surprisingly insightful and do just the fuzziest things sometimes.

We moved to the bookstore. I knew I wasn't going to need an owl anytime soon, so I watched as Harry got a birthday gift. Hagrid, who by now had warmed up to me felt bad about not giving me a birthday gift as well, decided to by me ice-cream from the Fortescue Ice Cream parlor, which was fine enough for me, because I'm a big fan of ice cream. But then came the moment I had been waiting for. I was finally going to get to buy my wand. I had my books, which I was going to read, but it was the wand I was going to use to perform all sorts of magic. I was curious about what wand I was going to get, how it was going to help me.

I watched as Harry got his wand, it was maybe a chapter in the book but in real life it was almost an hour. Ollivander was even apologetic when he told me that it would be a while before they would find a wand for Harry. It was about one hour later that I finally opened my eyes, in time to watch Harry produce an array of sparks that made it look like he was a firecracker exploding on New Year's Eve.

"Bravo, Mr Potter" Ollivander said enthusiastically as I clapped, Harry was even kind enough to mock curtsy at the applause he was getting before breaking into laughter.

"Your turn Mr Dursley" Ollivander said to me kindly. I nodded, gulping before stepping up.

"Try this" he said. "Cherry, Eight Inches, Unicorn Hair, Springy" he said to me.

I held the wand in my hand but before I could do anything, Ollivander snatched the wand away from me.

"This won't do" he told me.

The next fifteen minutes was spent with me trying on every wand I could find, except none of those worked. Ollivander was starting to get frustrated now.

"Try this" he said finally, after what had to easily be around fifty wands. "Oak, Dragon Heartstring, Eleven Inches, Sturdy" he said to me.

As soon as I gripped the wand, I felt an incredible warmth course through my chest. I knew this was the one. In the books, it wasn't as well described. The wand had indeed chosen the wizard, but this was even more amazing than it had any right to be.

"Wave it Dudley" Harry said to me. I obliged him, shooting out gold sparks as I brought the wand down, something that Harry and Ollivander applauded.

"Well done Mr Dursley" Ollivander said to me. "The oak wood will favor you well in transfiguration, and casting counter curses, or if you so chose, curses" he said to me with an oddly sinister tone. I decided that I was going to take good care of this wand because I didn't plan on coming back to this shop any time soon.

-x-

I suppose the first minor change in cannon happened at Madam Malkins. My hunting for the wand meant that we missed Draco Malfoy at Madam Malkin's, I was happy that I was not going to see that poncey git's face anytime soon, and yet I was filled with trepidation. I was comfortable enough changing things I knew, but I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to change things if they no longer played out the way I'd always read them to play out.

I wasn't too bothered however. McGonagall had told me that school students weren't allowed to cast magic outside of school, but as far as Harry and I were concerned, we weren't school students yet. I'd made past most of my past life bending rules to my benefit (it did wreck my personal and professional relationships bit by bit, but I'm not writing the story of my boring ordinary life here), and this was just another day at the park for me. I read the standard book of spells and the book of ingredients. I tried reading Hogwarts A History, but it was like reading 'War And Peace' if it was another ten thousand pages long.

Casting simple spells like Alohamora was easy. They were basically like flipping spells. I'd managed to sneak in some complicated books that I was going to use, but I realized that the one thing I was going to have to work on was wand movement. I was going to have to work extremely hard on it. Harry and I made the most use of our time studying and preparing. I didn't know how I was going to get Ron involved in studying, seeing as how it would be against his character to involve himself in extra curricular activities, but we'd burn that bridge when we got to it.

Our parents mostly avoided us, and the rest of our days passed by quickly. I grimaced as the day August 28th sped by, that was supposed to be my birthday after all.

One day before our train to the place of magic (literally), I heard a knock on my door, and Petunia Dursley stepped in. It was hard not to feel sorry for her to a certain extent, she was literally the only ordinary person on her side of the family (if you don't count her parents that is), her sister was a witch, and that always bothered her, and it couldn't be easy to see her son be a wizard.

"Dudley" she said to me. It was the first time I was directly spoken to in two months, and I have to admit it felt weird. "I ignored you, because I was scared, and jealous, but I've come to a conclusion"she said to me.

"What conclusion?" I asked her, curious about where she was going with this.

"I don't want to lose my son like I lost my sister" she said to me before engulfing me in a hug. I have to say, it felt- good. I hadn't been hugged like that in a long time. Sure she used to smother me from time to time, but this hug had more of her love in it. I found myself reciprocating despite my will.

"That's great to hear mom" I said, not sure where the sand in my eyes came from, or why I cared so much about it. "What about dad?" I asked her.

"I don't know about dad" she told me. "But if he really loves you, he'll learn to accept you too" she said to me, she sounded very doubtful.

"I'm gonna write you mom, I'll send you letters using Harry's owl" I said to her. Her face wore a thoughtful expression as soon as I said Harry's name.

"Dudley" she said to me, I looked at her, waiting for her to say something, but she didn't seem to want to say anything else. "Take care of yourself" she continued. "And him" she added, I was surprised to hear that. I hadn't heard (or read, or seen) Petunia say one good thing about Harry. She looked down and shuffled a bit before turning around and rushing out of the room.

I could have wasted my time wondering what was making her behave in such a weird manner, but fuck it. I had a train to catch, and a magical school to go to.

-x-

* * *

 **So that's it for this chapter. I don't know about exchange rates, I just made it up. I also don't remember if Harry got his wand first or his robes first, just assume this to be an AU where Harry got his wand first (that is if the cannon Harry got his robes first, why does this even matter)**

 **I was really happy with the response in the first chapter, and I'd like to clarify something. Dudley in this story is not an overpowered OC. By the time he does become overpowered, every other main character will probably be on par, or even better than him in some cases. Yes, he did wandless magic and seemed to demonstrate a level of aptitude over it, but my explanation for that is that he was able to better handle his thoughts, which lead to him being able to better control his magical core, or whatever.**

 **I'm probably going with cannon pairings for this, but Dudley wasn't really paired with anyone in the books was he ;), so we'll have to get him a nice girl to settle down with I suppose.**

 **Please keep reviewing the chapters I put out, and I'll try my hardest best to bust my ass and put out the updates (even though I'm the biggest flake on planet Earth and have never once finished any non one-shot story I have started, but a guy can always dream)**

 **Take care guys.**


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